Playlist: 11 Weeks

1. lush field of shadows, static
    hush and radial itch, primordial

2. goo of the sonogram’s wand 
    gliding across my belly

3. my daughter blooming
    into focus, feathered

4. and fluttering across the stormy
    screen, the way it rained 

5. so hard one night in April
    driving home from the café in Queens

6. where we’d eaten sweet tamales
    I thought we might drown

7. in the flooded streets
    but we didn’t and I want to say

 8. that was the night she was conceived:
     husk and sugar,

9. an apartment filled with music, 
    hiss of damp clothes 

10. drying on the radiator, 
      a prayer made with a record’s broken needle

11. to become beaming
      and undone.
Credit

Copyright © 2018 by Kendra DeColo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 5, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“Playlists have always been a way for me to honor the magic and impossibility of connection—an extended love song. In this poem, it is a way of going back and singing to my daughter, putting words to the speechlessness and awe of seeing her for the first time.”
—Kendra DeColo